Adolescence star Stephen Graham offered to adopt child co-star after mother’s death
Stephen Graham is receiving huge acclaim following his new show Adolescence, for which he plucked newcomer Owen Cooper from obscurity to overnight stardom.
Cooper, who is 15, is being tipped for Bafta victory for his debut acting performance as Jamie Miller, a child accused of murder, in the sleeper Netflix hit, which has become the streaming service’s most-watched title since its release earlier this month.
Graham told The Independent that the team behind the series were adamant that they would “create opportunities” through the show’s production, giving a chance to people “who may not normally have those opportunities”. Despite the’s show’s impressive one-shot filming technique, Graham has branded Cooper’s performance Adolescence’s “biggest achievement”.
But this isn’t the first time the show’s production company, Warp Films, have unearthed talent. In 2006, This is England introduced the world to Thomas Turgoose, who developed a close bond with Graham throughout filming.
Turgoose was 13 when he first played Shaun, a teenager who finds companionship in a group of older skinheads in the 1980s, led by Graham’s Combo – and Graham grew so close to his co-star that he once offered to adopt him after the death of his mother.
Speaking on the Private Parts podcast in 2021, Turgoose said he had to move in with his father, whom he barely knew, when his mother died of cancer shortly after This is England finished filming.
“I remember. I sat in my bedroom for days and weeks, and I was so confused,” he said. “This isn’t the lifestyle that I’m used to.”
“I spent a lot of time with Shane Meadows and Stephen Graham. They agreed between them that if they didn’t get on with my dad, or if they didn’t see my dad fit to bring me up, they was gonna adopt me.”
He added: “But they met my dad. And my dad is a proper bloke! He’s worked his arse off his whole life, and he’s respectable. Me and my dad are best friends now, whereas, when I moved in with him, I didn’t know him.”
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Turgoose also told The Independent that Graham and another of his co-stars, Vicky McClure, assured him they wouldn’t just drop him after cameras stopped filming.
“I was made a promise by Stephen Graham and Vicky [McClure] that when This Is England was released, it wasn’t just gonna be ‘That’s it,’” he said, adding: “They promised to stick by me and support me.”
It’s certain Graham would have made the same promise to Cooper, who doesn’t need to worry: after hearing rumblings of his performance in Adolescence, Saltburn writer-director Emerald Fennell cast him in her forthcoming adaptation of Wuthering Heights, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.
Cooper will play a young version of Heathcliff.
